Why Do NPCs Act Weird in Scroll of Taiwu 1.0? (Lovers Leaving, Odd Behavior)

Short answer

If NPCs in 1.0 are doing things that make no sense — a devoted partner leaving on the wedding night, companions acting clumsy, characters reacting in unexpected ways — you are not imagining it, and your save is almost certainly fine. The developers acknowledged this directly in the June 19 patch note.

They explained that making NPCs feel genuinely lifelike was the biggest area of work in 1.0, and that pouring deeper behavior logic into such an interconnected sandbox created a "break-in period." During it, the huge web of sandbox variables occasionally produces clumsy or odd NPC behavior. They stress this is not a logic breakdown or save corruption, called the June 19 update "only the first step" of tuning NPC behavior, and asked players to be patient and report cases.

• Odd NPC behavior in 1.0 is a known, acknowledged issue — not your save.
• The cause is 1.0's much deeper NPC behavior logic settling into the sandbox.
• The developers call it a temporary "break-in period."
• June 19 was the first NPC-AI tuning pass; more are coming.

What players are actually seeing

The most-reported example on launch week is a relationship one: a partner who is Devoted/Trusting still leaving on the night of the wedding. Others report companions or villagers making choices that seem out of character or reacting to events in surprising ways.

These are exactly the kind of "unexpected small episodes" the developers described. They are emergent results of many systems interacting, not a single broken script — which is also why they are being smoothed out gradually rather than with one switch.

• Partner leaving on the wedding night despite high relationship status.
• Companions or villagers behaving out of character.
• Unexpected reactions to events or interactions.
• These are emergent sandbox interactions, not a single broken feature.

What you should do

First, update the game. The developers are patching daily during launch week, and NPC behavior is being actively tuned, so the build you are on matters. Restart the Steam client to pull the newest patch before drawing conclusions.

Second, report clear cases. Because this is emergent behavior, a specific, reproducible example (what the NPC's status was, what you did, what happened) is genuinely useful to the developers and far more likely to get fixed than a vague complaint. Until then, treat the odd moments as part of a launch-week sandbox finding its feet rather than a reason to abandon a run.

• Update first — NPC behavior is being tuned across daily patches.
• Report specific, reproducible cases with the NPC's status and your actions.
• Don't delete a save over it — it is not corruption.
• Expect gradual improvement, not a single fix.

Is this the same as the bugs in the patch notes?

Not exactly. The June 19 patch fixed a long list of concrete bugs — adventure freezes, exploits, text errors — and separately addressed NPC behavior as an ongoing tuning effort. So some odd behavior you saw on day one may already be fixed as a specific bug, while the broader "NPCs feel a bit off" experience is the break-in period the developers described.

If something looks like a hard error (red text, a freeze, a softlock) rather than just strange decision-making, check the English patch-notes summary to see whether it was already fixed, and update before reporting.

• Concrete bugs (freezes, red text, exploits) were fixed as specific items.
• General "NPCs feel off" = the acknowledged break-in period being tuned.
• Hard errors: check the patch-notes summary and update first.
• Decision-making oddities: report them as behavior feedback.

Related paths